Random Black Friday 2 is a hit for Shopkick

Shopkick, the location-based shopping applications that offers up rewards just by having its app installed and walking into a store tried a little experiment late last February, which they called Black Friday 2. What’s that, you ask? Read on to find out.

The Black Friday 2 experiment, which took place on February 24th of this year, offered up bigger and better rewards to walk-in customers across all stores partnered with Shopkick. Partners include:

Shopkick’s idea was very simple : make an ordinary day a big shopping day for walk-ins, much like Black Friday. So what kind of results did Shopkick see with its Flash Black Friday 2? Well, some pretty great results.

Black Friday 2 was an experiment that we ran on Friday, February 24th with all of our retail partners.

Our goal was to create a big shopping day “out of nothing” by giving consumers increased walk-in rewards across shopkick’s entire Partner Alliance.

It worked and actually drove higher levels of foot traffic than Black Friday in November. It actually set a new record for walk-ins.

Several retailers saw double-digit increases in walk-ins compared to the earlier Black Friday.

This Friday was a regular old day and not even really a true shopping day by most standards. No big sales or anything else. It’s basically getting in-season shopping traffic during out-of-season.

We are indeed planning to do this again.

Really speaks to the power of the Shopkick’s partner alliance in terms of solving the biggest challenge for retailers – getting consumers into the store (where they see great conversation rates for purchases).

Registered 7% more walk-ins from shopkick users to partner stores on Feb 24th than on the original Black Friday in November. Compared to previous four Fridays in February, it was a 325% lift.

As you can see, the results are pretty darn impressive and it’s a very smart way to promote the application, even if its to put it back into the consciousness of past users. I know I’ll be checking the app much more frequently from now on. Best of all, as you can see above, Shopkick has every intention of doing this again.

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 8, 2012 – shopkick, the largest location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for walking into stores and interacting with products, today announced the success of Black Friday 2, an experimental initiative designed to significantly boost foot traffic to partner retail stores using holiday tactics during normal, non-peak shopping days throughout the year. Black Friday 2 took place on Friday, February 24, exactly 3 months after the original Black Friday, and resulted in the company’s largest walk-in day ever, delivering a record-breaking number of shopkick users to participating partners, including: American Eagle, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, Macy’s, Old Navy, Toys “R” Us, Wet Seal and more.

“We asked a simple question: What if retailers could create Black Friday shopping behavior any day of the year that they wanted?” said Cyriac Roeding, Co-founder and CEO of shopkick. “So we offered about double the kicks to users for walking into any shopkick Partner Alliance store, and that was still worth less than a dollar. It resulted in a dramatic increase in foot traffic. Our users rushed to the stores and went shopping. With Black Friday 2, which was an otherwise completely normal workday with no big sales, we proved that shopkick can literally create Black Friday-like shopping behavior and foot traffic amongst users by harnessing the power of our unique Alliance of partners. Out of thin air, on any day of the year – that is powerful.”

On Black Friday 2, the shopkick Partner Alliance broke the previous record of single-day walk-ins, set on Black Friday in November 2011.

With 3 million current active users, shopkick drove over 5 million walk-ins and 12 million product scans, as well as more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011.

Shopkick partners with over 40 global brands, 11 national retailers and several media entities spanning categories from grocery to fashion to electronics and beyond.

To provide high-value rewards to shoppers actually walking-in stores, the shopkick app detects a shopkick signal, emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating store and picked up by the microphone of a shopper’s phone. Because the retail partner knows it is rewarding actual visitors, it then delivers rewards called “kicks,” which can be collected at all participating partner store locations. Kicks are redeemed for in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets, Facebook Credits, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more.

Because shopkick is able to detect actual presence inside stores, partner retailers ensure that marketing dollars put into the shopkick program are being spent to reward customers who are actually present in the store, translating into higher value rewards for the shopper. Presence detection is something not possible with traditional location-based applications, which rely on GPS technology that has a typical error radius of 500 yards on mobile phones. And, because the detection occurs on the user’s mobile device, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user’s control.

shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers high-value rewards, offers and exclusive deals at shopkick’s national retail partners simply for walking into stores and malls. Even more rewards can be earned for scanning partner brand products at over 250,000 stores nationwide. In combination with a groundbreaking new location technology called “shopkick Signal”, the app can verify location within feet, and because the detection occurs on the phone, privacy of presence information is completely in the users’ control. shopkick’s growing partner alliance includes American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Macy’s, Old Navy, Simon Property Group, The Sports Authority, Target, Toys”R”Us, west elm, The Wet Seal, Visa, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Intel, HP and more. shopkick is the only 100% performance-based marketing platform in the physical retail world, with measurable foot traffic and transactions at stores. The app grew to 3 million users in its first 18 months. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.